Innocence (25 page)

I know I can’t look too convincing.

Honey’s smile is rueful, as though she understands.

Catching my eye, Malachi gets up, walks over to me as I lean against the door for support, feeling suddenly weak.

“What’s wrong?” he asks gently. Too gently. I can tell he wants to have this conversation with me alone.

“He doesn’t remember anything,” I whisper. “It’s probably just temporary. The doctors say it could all come back to him any moment.”

I swallow down the lump in my throat. I don’t know why I’m lying to Malachi. I don’t know why I can’t tell him my deepest, darkest fears.

Honey steps away, busies herself with the contents of her small purse.

Malachi raises his hand to brush my cheek, and I think he must have forgotten about earlier when I kissed him.

“Do you want me to come in there with you?”

I know he wants to see Jay, and it’s what I want more than anything, but he can’t. It’s all too close and claustrophobic. I don’t want Dad to find out that Isabella had an affair with Malachi like this. And with them both there, Honey could say anything. I’m so scared she will say something anyway. Something loose and offhand, something that will cut so deep.

I don’t want anyone else hurt because of this.

So I shake my head.

Pain shines bright in his eyes. He tries to hide it, but he can’t. Even as he turns away and sits back down to wait, I can see the way he has fallen inside.

Something has changed, and he can’t hide from me anymore.

I’
VE
MADE
a mistake. An important one, maybe, though it seemed so small.

Malachi should be here with me. He should be by my side.

Honey looks round at everyone as I lead her down the ward—all the other patients, the still forms I’ve been trying to ignore, the relatives sat by their bedsides.

The nurses are quick to want to move Jay, and I’m relieved in the most basic way. I’m not sure I could deal with the sadness I feel here, and I know he wouldn’t be able to.

Dad still stands by the window, his back to the world out there. I think it’s best that we speak to him before Jay, so, awkwardly, I introduce them.

Warily Dad nods, his expression closed off. It occurs to me too late that Honey looks so like Isabella, it is akin to a knife in his heart.

Behind us, Jay is curled on his side, hugging his pillow. Everything inside me feels so mixed up when I look at him. I’m so utterly grateful he’s awake, but I desperately want my brother back. The brother that knows me better than anyone else does.

Gracefully Honey excuses herself and walks over to Jay. I hover back with Dad, and although I can’t hear the words she says, her voice is full of kindness and warmth. She couldn’t
be
any better with him. She’s tactile, but she doesn’t make him uncomfortable. She even gets him to talk to her, to eventually smile.

In these first few minutes, whether she knows it or not, she’s somehow giving him what neither I nor Dad ever could. She’s mothering him. I don’t quite know how else to define it. It’s just something I’ve always known he needs.

My heart aches to see it. Or maybe it just aches.

I look back along the corridor, thinking of Malachi. I want him here with me. I don’t want to have broken something I’ve not yet had the chance to realize fully.

“Dad, I need to do something,” I say, reluctant to leave but not knowing how else to sort this out. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

It won’t be long until the nurses are going to ask us to go, but I know Dad will wait and Honey will be there until they force her to leave.

Quickly I walk back along the ward and out the doors to the corridor, but when I get there, the chairs are empty, and the cups on the floor—and Malachi—are gone.

Fuck.

I take off at a run down to the car park. Honey’s mud-splattered Land Rover sticks out among the smaller cars like a sore thumb, and at first I think Malachi’s Mini is gone, but then I see it’s not. My guitar still lies on the back seat, glowing in the last of the sun. Maisie is not in there with it.

Somewhere a dog barks. I turn, shielding my eyes from the low sunlight coming through the tall conifers surrounding the car park. Malachi holds up his hand, waves to me from the other side of the car park near the road, then hurries over, Maisie straining on a leash at his side.

“What happened?” he calls out worriedly as soon as I’m in earshot.

“Nothing.” I shake my head.

What is it about you?
I think as I look at him, the sun hung so low behind him it makes his outline glow in the shadows.
What is it that makes me want to watch you all day, have you with me?

He’s beautiful, yes, but it’s more than that, I’d feel this way if something happened to change the way he looks. I’d feel this way if the world stopped.

It’s as though there is a space inside me that matches the shape of him and I need to feel the way he fits.

“Whoa,” he says, his eyes widening a little. “You bolted out here, and now you’re….” He smiles, wryly, pulling on the leash, making Maisie sit at his feet.

I frown. “Now I’m what?”

I’ve never seen him blush, and when he does, even if it is just the tiniest bit, heat flares inside me. I like the way it burns.

“You’re doing that thing I shouldn’t like, except now it’s as though you’re saying my name inside your head.”

The way he puts it just makes me grin, and he smiles back at me until I have to look away.

“I thought you’d gone,” I say, needing to change the subject, needing to feel the ground beneath my feet again.

“Nope. You’ll have to do a lot more than that if you want to get rid of me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I understand.”

“I was worried Honey was going to say something because you were there, and I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
So I ended up hurting you.
I don’t say it, but he knows the words are there.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not.”

I find it hard to express everything I feel, but I want to be open with him. I want him to open me up, see inside. I’ve never felt that way, not even with Jay. We knew each other too well for that. Sometimes it was as though Jay was already inside me, thinking my thoughts, his feelings echoing mine.

With Malachi, all I have are glimpses, and then we spin away from each other.

But I don’t want just glimpses anymore.

M
ALACHI
WAITS
in the car as I go back and say good-bye to Jay. Depressingly it’s like saying good-bye to a stranger. He seems more comfortable with Honey now than me or Dad. Mostly, though, I tell myself I’m just glad he’s going to be all right, that everything is going to be all right.

Even though I’m not sure it will be.

When Dad gruffly asks me if I’m coming home with him, it hurts to say no, but I have to. I sense we’re at a crossroads. I think Dad senses it too. There are things we need to talk about, but I can’t do it right now.

And then there is just me and Honey.

“Was me being there as bad as you thought?” she asks.

I don’t know how she knows how much I was dreading it.

“No… I don’t know.” I shrug.

Linking arms with me, she smiles sadly. “We’re going to make some good memories for him, every day, I promise.”

“Yeah.” I can’t return her smile.

Outside the light is gone, and a gray smokelike dusk hangs across the sky. The sea of curved dark cars holds my gaze for a moment.

“Don’t take him away from Dad,” I say suddenly, my throat choked up with unshed tears, with the weight of everything heavy inside me.
Don’t take him away from me.
Even though Dad and I haven’t always got on, I know he loves us.

It would be so easy for her, I can see it. Her money, her
better
life, everything so much brighter on her side of the fence. What have we got to offer Jay, now he doesn’t even know us? I choke down the thought and all the vast emptiness it exposes. He was my brother, and now—now there is nothing.
Nothing.

Warm fingers squeeze my arm through my T-shirt. “Will you give me a chance to prove myself worthy of your trust?” she asks gently, her eyes searching mine.

I nod tightly, not knowing what else to do.

“Do you want to come and meet the rest of your family tomorrow?”

I look around, desperately searching for my anchor in all this uncertainty, and even in the coming dark, find his eyes on mine as he sits behind the wheel of his car.

“Malachi is going to come with me,” I say, not looking away from him, not wanting to. There is no room for compromise on this.

“Yes, I thought as much.” She raises an eyebrow, smiling kindly. “I doubt I could stop him.”

Sitting in the car with Malachi, I watch her reverse her monstrous car and leave. She lights up the car park, then the quiet road behind it, and then she’s gone.

“Do you want to go for a drive?”

I shake my head, drawing my limbs in close, trying to make everything inside me small enough, it will just disappear.

“I thought we could go over to the old industrial estate by the river and you could have a drive round, if you want?”

Still I shake my head, resting my forehead on my knees, the fabric rough against my skin.

Malachi drives out there anyway.

Detached from it all, I watch as Malachi unbuckles his seat belt and gets out. He walks round the car and opens my door.

“Come on. Five minutes.”

Reluctantly I shift over into the driving seat. The car park we’re in is very dark, very huge, and very empty.

“I want you to start her up, put the lights on, and then put your foot down, hard. She’ll get up to forty or fifty in a few seconds.”

“What?”

“We’re going to practice some emergency stops.”

“In the dark, in a car park?”

I look at him sidelong, and he smiles as he says, “I just don’t think
dwelling
is the best way to deal with anything.”

“And crashing your car is?”

“You’re not going to crash. You’re going to stop. This is about stopping, so you don’t crash.”

“You could have just given me a hug, you know,” I tell him grumpily.

Resolutely, he shakes his head. “You’d still be dwelling. You need to think about doing something else.”

Sighing at his reasoning, I start the car.

And though I hate to admit it, he’s right. Even if it doesn’t change anything, concentrating on controlling the car takes me out of myself. It takes me somewhere else for a while.

After nearly an hour of taking my mind off things, he drives me back to the hotel.

I’m so sure he’s going to come in with me. We’re different now, closer than ever. It’s a forgone conclusion in my mind—he’s going to come in, and whether anything happens or not, he’s going to spend the night with me again.

It must be nearly eleven when we creep along the dimly lit hallway, footsteps whispering in the quiet of the hotel. When we stop outside my room, Malachi leans back against the wall opposite, looking uncomfortable. A wave of dark hair falls across his eyes.

It’s so difficult to know what he’s thinking.

Guitar in hand, I unlock the door to my room with the heavy key that sat awkwardly in my pocket all day, but still Malachi stands there, making no move to come inside.

I hover on the threshold. “You…?” I motion my head, feeling stupid.

He knows what I want.

“I better go. Maisie. It’s late.” His voice is barely louder than a whisper.

I close my eyes. We get close and he shies away. I don’t know what to do.

“Why?” I couldn’t feel any more lost. I don’t hide it.

In a single fluid movement, he steps towards me, reaches up a hand, strokes my jaw.

Pathetically I lean into his touch, even though it utterly confuses me.

“You’re going to get the wrong idea,” he whispers.

Pain twists in my chest, and I jerk my head away. I can’t look at him. What fucking idea am I
supposed
to be getting?

Angrily I stumble backwards into my room, banging my guitar on the wall as I try and shut the door with my free hand.

This has been the longest fucking day of my life, and I’m sick of not knowing where I stand, what this is between us. Sick of him always pushing me away, keeping me at arm’s length.

“
Christopher
!” The flat of his hand is on the door, stopping me from closing it. “
I didn’t mean
—”

“Leave me alone,” I mutter, shoving the door hard against him, wanting to hear the lock click shut.

But he’s stronger than that, and we stand at this impasse, pushing the wrong way, the both of us breaking like glass.

I rest my forehead against the wood, sure I hear him sigh beyond it.

“
Please,
” he groans. And I step away from the door, letting it fall open.

With an unfathomable expression, he pulls me roughly into his arms, and we hold each other tight in the shadow of the doorway. I don’t know what it means anymore. Any of it.

I’m tired, my emotions drained out of me.

When he leaves, I still stand there, listening to the thud of my heart, the wind blowing against the glass of the window, the quietening night.

Sitting on the bed, my guitar in my lap, I run my fingers across the strings. I play the chords I know, trying different combinations—the sounds either jarring through me or singing. I wanted Malachi to teach me others. I still do. But Malachi is an unknown quantity, and I don’t want to think about him right now. I don’t want to think about anyone. So I concentrate on something else.

The bare bones of a song filter through from someone’s car stereo in the street outside, and I sing along, making up the words I don’t know, feeling the words in my chest rather than really hearing them as they come out of my mouth.

After a while I become restless. I get up, put on my coat, intent on seeing Cass again.